


Crazier for You

by likearecord



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eliot Waugh's Canonically Huge Dick, Enthusiastic Consent, Lots of sex and no crying, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Quentin Coldwater is Not a Virgin, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:14:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22131418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likearecord/pseuds/likearecord
Summary: Eliot gets hit with sex pollen. Quentin channels his inner Gryffindor and steps up to help.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 43
Kudos: 461





	1. Chapter 1

Eliot does not even remember turning down the guy who is currently pointing an angry finger in his face. He vaguely remembers a first time, back in his first year, when he _hadn’t_ turned down the guy—mediocre sex is still sex, after all, and despite his rakish affectation, he isn’t _so_ promiscuous that he can’t actually remember his sexual partners. However, he definitely does not remember some night a few weeks ago when he’d apparently cruelly rejected…Geoffrey? Jeremy?

“You think you can just run around playing with people’s emotions, Waugh,” maybe-Jerome is saying. Really, how was it even possible that Eliot doesn’t remember the guy’s _name_? It wasn’t that large of a school. It must have been that minor of an impression.

Could-be-Gregory takes a step back, looking smug, and fishes a little bottle out of his pocket.

“Woah,” Eliot says, mirroring the step back. “What the fuck is that?”

“This,” the guy says, uncorking the bottle with a triumphant flip of his thumb, “this is a taste of your own medicine.”

And then, surprising no one, he tosses its contents at Eliot, engulfing him in a pale pink, sweet-smelling cloud of powder. Well, fuck him, then. Whatever this shit is, it probably isn’t going to be good.

Eliot’s mind races through the possibilities as perhaps-Antonio turns on his heel and scurries off, almost immediately forgotten. He feels a little tickle in the back of his throat—muting potion? Some kind of poison? Powdered truth serum? A tingle starts in his palms, a warm, radiating heat that moves up his forearms, turning his skin into champagne. He lifts his hands so he can look at them; he ses only normal-looking skin but the movement itself tightens the seams of his shirt and vest against his shoulders. It’s just the slightest pressure, but it feels, for some reason, intensely good. He takes a step forward, in the direction of the cottage, and immediately suppresses a sharp gasp at the pleasure of fabric shifting against his thighs.

So, some kind of sex pollen shit. That…tracked. So far, though, nothing he couldn’t handle. He assumes sex pollen is only debilitating for amateurs, people whose sex lives needed pollen to spice them up, or who weren’t used to riding their own lusts like a roller coaster.

He needs to go back to the cottage, lock himself in his room, rub a few out, and sleep this shit off. Tomorrow he can raise an arch eyebrow at his resentful pollinator and say something witty and dismissive. Tomorrow. Assuming, of course, that he gets through the powder’s active duration without making a goddamn naked fool of himself.

Even this positive attitude can’t overcome the pollen’s quickly building effects, much to his dismay. By the time he’s made it halfway to the cottage he’s so hard that his pants feel at least a size too small. He’d only barely refrained from putting his hands all over Alice when she’d passed him on the path and sniffed disapprovingly at him. _Alice_. Alice, who’d come as a package deal with Quentin, and whom Eliot likes, really, he does, but who also occupies a place in his mind that is almost the polar opposite of sex.

It takes a very long fifteen minutes for him to get the Cottage into sight. He stops, bracing a hand against a tree and eyeing the 30 or so feet between him and the front door. He just needs to get to the door—no, he needs to get through the door and up the stairs, down the hall, into his room, and then he’ll be safe. His skin is on fire, still bubbly in effervescent waves; he can feel beads of sweat gathering on his forehead and the intense burn of the color staining his cheeks. A lesser man, he thinks, would already be rolling around in the grass with the first person they’d seen. Eliot refuses. He _refuses_ to let some lousy lay pull this bullshit magical humiliation on him. He is going to get through this. He is going to get to that door. He is going to—

“Eliot?”

The noise of familiar footsteps rises behind him, half shuffle, half hurry. Oh, no. Quentin. _Quentin_. The opposite of Alice—so firmly bound to sex in Eliot’s mind that just the sound of Q’s tongue wrapping around the syllables of his name is enough to make him moan and dig his fingers harder into the bark of the tree. The rational part of his mind screams at him to tell Quentin to fuck all the way off. The rest of him shudders so hard at the buzz of awareness and flush of heat accompanying Quentin’s footsteps that he thinks he might actually come in his pants like some kind of middle schooler.

  
“Eliot, hey. Are you okay?”

He can hear the concern in Q’s voice and feel it in the light touch of Quentin’s hand on his shoulder. “Dude, you look…not great,” Quentin says, in his kindest and most worried voice. “What happened? What is this on your shirt?” Eliot squeezes his eyes shut so tightly they hurt, but he is so aware of his own skin that the brush of Quentin’s hand against his shirt front—presumably wiping off the lingering powder—sets him on fire.

“No, don’t,” he grits out, pushing at Quentin’s hand. “You don’t want to inhale it. It’s sex pollen.”

“It’s _sex pollen_?” Quentin asks, disbelief dripping from his voice. “Sex pollen is real?”

Every word that comes out of his mouth seems exquisitely sculpted by his tongue. Eliot is going to die. Eliot needs, more than he’s ever needed anything in his life, to get as far as possible from Quentin Coldwater before he jumps him and fucks him against this tree in full view of literally anyone who cares to look. He needs to—he needs to stand up, he needs to walk 30 feet, he needs to be hit in the head with a rubber mallet.

He starts to say, “You shouldn’t get too close,” but before he can get a word out he finds himself pressed against Quentin, hands fisted in Quentin’s soft, generic t-shirt, Quentin’s bottom lip between his teeth. “Shit,” Eliot says. He can’t let go. He _can’t_ let go. “I can’t, I’m so sorry. You have to stop me.”

He can feel Quentin’s sharp, rapid breath against his mouth. He loosens his grip on Quentin’s shirt, flattens his hands on Quentin’s chest instead, and quietly moans against his mouth as his fingers find the slight grooves of Quentin’s ribs.

“Okay, okay,” Quentin is saying. He pulls his head back enough to break the not kissing, mouth-mashing thing Eliot can’t stop himself from doing. “We need to get you inside.”

“You need to get away from me,” Eliot says, barely gritting each word out past the weight of his desire to get Quentin naked and underneath him. “I _can’t_ , I can’t stop.”

“It’s okay,” Quentin says. Eliot can visualize the gears in his head working. “I’ve got you, come on.”

Quentin shifts enough to get an arm around Eliot’s waist, supporting Eliot as he tugs him towards the cottage. “We’re going to get you inside. We’re going to get you some cold water. And we’re going to get you an antidote.”

Quentin is acting like the way he’s touching Eliot is _normal_. It is the most erotic thing Eliot has ever felt. The heat of it around his ribs is unbearable. It’s searing itself into his skin. It takes every drop of Eliot’s self-control not to tackle Quentin into the grass at their feet.

“There’s almost never an antidote,” he manages. “It usually just has to run its course.”

Ten feet closer to the cottage door. Ten feet closer to his room. Soon he was going to have to let go of Quentin and deny every screaming urge in his body that told him he could get Quentin to let him have this. Eliot has always had a back door into Quentin’s bed—no pun intended. He knows, if he’s ever willing to admit it to himself, that he could have Quentin in bed within an hour at basically any given moment. But he can’t—he _shouldn’t_ —open that door, not like this.

“How long?” Quentin asks. Eliot can tell he’s making conversation to try and distract Eliot. Like thinking through the logistics could possibly take Eliot’s mind off his leaking dick and Q’s soft mouth. Like Quentin’s very presence could ever do anything other than heighten the effects of the pollen. “How long until it wears off?”

“I don’t know. Hours? A day? When it’s satisfied that I’ve fucked half the campus?” Eliot says. He realizes his hand is on Quentin’s ass only when he discovers he’s been unconsciously flexing his fingers to dig them into Q’s skin. “God, sorry.”

Five feet. Four, three, and then in the door. The cottage air seems heavy—he can see the dust motes floating in the beams of light but, more than that, he can feel them on his skin. He tries very, very hard to avoid anyone’s eyes, but his gaze automatically snaps to find Margo tucked into a chair with a thick textbook. She looks up, her expression quickly sharpening into one of concern when she spots his rumpled shirt and tie, the crimson stains on his cheeks, the way he’s counting on Quentin to hold him up. He shakes his head at her, once, warning her off. He has no more sexual interest in Margo than he has in Alice. He also can’t stop thinking about how soft her thighs would be if he ran his hands up them. The thought of rubbing his stubbled cheek against her smooth skin sends a wave of desire crashing over him—so hard he moans and stumbles, nearly causing Quentin to buckle under the unexpected weight.

“Just a little further,” Quentin says soothingly. “We’re almost there.”

Almost there. _Almost_ to Eliot’s bedroom—and bed—with Quentin still pressed against his side, hot and compact. “I feel like I’m going to die,” Eliot whispers. “This is insane.”

Every inch of him is alive in a way he’s never been before. He can taste every word Quentin says. He can feel the silkiness of Quentin’s hair without even touching it. His senses are so awake that he feels he can actually hear Q’s heart beating, hear the soft strands of hair brushing against each other, and feel every minute vibration of Quentin’s throat as he forms words.

He tries so hard when they reach his warded door, but he can’t get his fingers to stop flexing long enough to perform the tuts to drop the wards. After his second try, Quentin gently brushes Eliot’s hands down and launches into the series flawlessly. He knows Quentin thinks he’s a mediocre, unimpressive magician at best, but there’s something so incredibly hot about watching Q do magic. Something about those cardsharp hands really does it for Eliot, even in the most minor of spells. Usually he can control himself. _Usually_. He stares at Quentin’s hands and imagines them on him—imaginary Q hands skimming over his shoulders and chest, dragging nails lightly down Eliot’s thighs, one hand on Eliot’s dick, jerking him off, the other somewhere, literally anywhere on Eliot’s skin.

Quentin cuts easily through Eliot’s familiar wards and helps shuffle him into his bedroom. Eliot makes it a whole three steps on his own before he’s able to crash face-first onto his bed. The pressure of the bed against his body—against his aching cock—is so good that he can’t suppress another moan. He ruts very lightly against the mattress, trying to be discreet until Quentin leaves, at least.

“Are you okay?” Q asks. “Do you need, like…water? Drugs? A counter-spell?”

“Quentin,” Eliot bites out. “It’s sex pollen. I need to _fuck_.”

The room goes so silent behind him that he thinks Q might have bolted. Eliot rubs a little more deliberately on the mattress. He listens, hard, but when he can only hear the sounds of people talking and fucking around downstairs, he cautiously lifts his hips and reaches down for his zipper.

  
“Um.” Quentin clears his throat from somewhere behind Eliot. “Does it…hurt? I mean, are you okay?”

  
“Yeah,” Eliot says, hands stilling immediately. “It hurts. I know blue balls is kind of a bullshit thing, but this feels like blue balls times 100. And everywhere else. I don’t think I’m actually going to _die_ from sex pollen, but it’s just—intense.”

The hamsters in Quentin’s mind resume their frantic wheel running. Even with his back to Q, Eliot can _hear_ him thinking. He usually appreciates Q’s instinct for problem solving, but what he really needs is for Quentin to _leave_ and let Eliot get to it. There’s a chance he can just jerk off ten times and get through this.

The hamsters come to a screeching halt. Quentin exhales in a sharp huff and says, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Eliot asks. Okay…what?

“Okay, so, we…fuck. You can fuck me.”

Eliot comes as soon as Quentin’s mouth finishes forming the word “me," spasming to the flash of images that phrase brings to mind—a thousand pictures of what it would be like to fuck Q flashing before his eyes all at once. He spills into the tight constraint of his pants without having even reached his button, much less undone it and found rhythm. “Jesus,” he gasps. “Jesus Christ.”

He feels the bed dip as Q sits next to him. He feels Q’s wide, warm hand on his shoulder blade. He feels himself getting hard again.

“I need you to know,” Eliot says helplessly. “Once I start, I can’t—I don’t know if I can stop.”

“It’s okay,” Quentin says with his stupid, incredibly kissable mouth, in his stupid, incredibly sincere voice. “This is me, consenting. I am sober, I am not sex pollened, and I am enthusiastically consenting to be your sex doll for as long as it takes. Well, within reason. If you’re still like this in a day or so, then, you know. The infirmary.”

There is a split second where Eliot thinks _no_. If they’re going to fuck, their first time, it should not be like this. Eliot should be in control. Eliot should have the wherewithal to take Quentin apart piece by piece and show him the fucking stars. He is absolutely not going to throw that back door open under these circumstances. He is…moving before his brain can even finish forming the syllable, though, rolling onto his side and dragging Quentin down by his shirt so he can crush their mouths together. Mortifyingly, it’s a mess. Even his first kisses hadn’t been this clumsy, hadn’t had this much cracking together of teeth and noses. Even as a skinny, puberty-riddled teen, Eliot had been smoother than this. He can't seem to coordinate his hands and his mouth now, though, can't even get ahold of his body enough to rub on Quentin’s thigh with anything like rhythm. He huffs out a frustrated noise and pulls back, inhaling deeply before he goes in for another try.

“Hey,” Quentin says. He puts his warm hands on either side of Eliot’s face and makes deliberate eye contact. “Come here.” With Quentin guiding him, Eliot is able to slide into the right angle. He focuses on holding back, on slowing his chase of Quentin’s mouth, not rushing into anything faster than what Quentin makes happen. He inhales with Quentin, exhaling when he exhales. He lets Q lead him into something he can sort of control. And…it works—he doesn’t ache any less, but he can finally catch his breath.  
  
Quentin smoothly rolls them then, putting Eliot onto his back and bracing over him with his hands on either side of Eliot’s head.

“I’ve got you,” Quentin mumbles. He shifts enough to straddle Eliot, sitting up straighter to unbutton Eliot’s shirt. “It’s okay.” He pops a single button out of its hole with such exquisite precision that Eliot sees the sun. “We can do anything you want. Or need. Well, not _anything_ , I mean, there are _some_ limits.”

Eliot does not know how to say no to this. He feels a sudden, painful affinity with Alexander Hamilton.

A second button, a third, a fourth. Every nerve in Eliot’s body has relocated to his sternum. The occasional brush of Quentin’s knuckles against his skin make his dick twitch so hard it hurts. His champagne skin fizzes over every time Q touches him.

“ _Quentin_ ,” he says, desperately. “Q. Baby, I…I am a man of simple needs right now.”

“Got it,” Quentin says. He pops the last button out of its hole and tugs the bottom of Eliot’s shirt out of his pants. He turns his quick, sure hands to Eliot’s belt next, then his pants button, then his zipper—Eliot feels every centimeter of the careful drag of Quentin’s knuckles against the fabric of Eliot’s pants. Even that much sensation—that displacement of air—feels better than any blow job he’d ever gotten. Quentin clears his throat and Eliot manages to jerk his gaze from his hands to his mouth. “I’m going to suck your dick now,” Q says. “I mean, if you want me to.”

“I—” Eliot starts, breaking for a shaky laugh. “I have literally never wanted anything more in my life.”

Quentin smiles at him then, dimples briefly appearing, and maneuvers them until his own shirt is off and Eliot’s pants and underwear are down around his knees. He leans down, placing almost-chaste kisses on Eliot’s collarbone, his solar plexus, just to the left of his bellybutton. He discreetly moves his fingers through a quick cleaning spell, disappearing the evidence of what would have been Eliot’s embarrassingly premature orgasm under normal circumstances. The feeling of Q’s magic moving over him is almost, he thinks, as much of a turn on as his actual hands would be. He tries very hard to just lie back and let Quentin do his thing.

“Please,” Eliot whimpers. “I need—”

  
Everything. He needs _everything_. Quentin just hums in agreement and drops his head and oh, _oh_ , holy shit, the wet heat of Quentin’s mouth wrapping around him is so good, feels so _right_ , that the sensation completely overwhelms him. His mind explodes in a burst of white-hot _need_ and _want_ and his vision swims, equally bright spots of light and dark flickering in front of his eyes.

Quentin giving head is nothing like Eliot would have expected. There’s no hesitancy, no awkward or apologetic false starts. He just works his way down, doing insane twisty things with his tongue until Eliot is so slick from spit and pre-come that Quentin can let Eliot sink further and further down his throat. He watches Quentin brace a hand against the mattress and shift a little higher—only then does he realizes that he’s helplessly fucking up into Q’s mouth, lifting high enough that Quentin’s nose brushes Eliot’s pubic hair at the crest of his arching. Quentin chokes a little, but he doesn’t stop—thank fuck he doesn’t stop—he just adjusts his angle again, then again, shifting this time to slide his free hand up Eliot’s thigh, over the crease of his leg, his thumb stroking firmly up Eliot’s perineum and stopping just shy of his tight, throbbing balls.

Eliot feels himself drop right off the edge and gasps, pushing up to chase the heat of Quentin’s mouth. He wants to put his hands on Quentin, to wrap his fingers up in Quentin’s hair and hold him in place so he can bury his dick halfway down Q’s throat, but he winds his hands in the sheets instead and comes for what feels like five minutes. He’s shaking when he finally stumbles out the other side of his orgasm. His sheets are wrapped so tightly around his fingers that he thinks he might be losing circulation.

“Oh my god,” he breathes. “Where have you been hiding _that_?”

“Not hiding,” Q says mildly. “Right here. Plain sight.”

“That is—that is not what I thought you sucking my dick would be like.”

“We’ll revisit that potentially backhanded compliment later,” Quentin says. He sounds amused, but strained. Eliot wonders if any of this is working for Quentin. If he’s into it, really, if he’s going to get off at all, or if this is some kind of Gryffindor sex sacrifice Q is making because he’s _exactly_ the kind of guy who’d see sucking someone’s dick when they’re in the throes of indiscriminate magical lust as the Right Thing To Do. He’s also, apparently, still talking. Eliot can’t focus on this many things at once, but he makes a real effort to tune into what Q is saying. “—do you feel?” Quentin finishes.

Eliot does a quick check. Some, but not all, of the tension he’s been holding is waning. His head is spinning. His skin still feels carbonated, so sensitive to even the drafts of air that he is intensely aware of every square inch of his body. He’s no more than half hard, which is something, at least. A respite from the worst of it.

“I’m…okay. I’m good,” he says, shakily. “Thank you.”

“Do you think it’s passed already?” Quentin asks. He crawls up and flops on his side, next to Eliot. Eliot takes in his red, swollen mouth, the dilation of his pupils, the hints of a flush on his face. Quentin shifts discreetly and Eliot feels him, hard against his hip, just for a second. He drags his eyes down and…okay, that answers that particular question. Quentin is hard, too, his jeans molded over the shape of his dick.

Eliot reaches a hand down and rubs his palm over Quentin through his jeans. Q makes a surprised noise that is maybe the hottest thing Eliot has ever heard in his life. He is immediately, almost painfully hard again. So…no, the pollen has not been appeased. “Did you mean it?” he asks, wrapping his fingers as much as he can around Quentin, frustrated with the fabric that blocks his touch. “About…sex. About me fucking you.”

He gets, somehow, impossibly harder at the thought.

“Yeah,” Quentin says. Eliot watches his pupils dilate even more. He watches Quentin bite his lip, still swollen from sucking Eliot’s dick and Eliot—Eliot knows he has already come twice in the last, like, half an hour. But he’s pretty sure he could get off on just the thought of spreading Q under him and fucking him through the mattress.

“Are you _sure_?” Eliot asks.

“Eliot, you know I’m not, like, a virgin. Right?” Ah, there it is. There’s that trademark Coldwater tone: equal parts exasperated and defensive.

“Yeah, but have you…” Eliot gestured vaguely between them. Have you been fucked. Have you been fucked by a _guy_. There’s a difference, he imagines, between some Quentin-friendly experimental girl with a strap-on and what Eliot is about to do to him, God and sex pollen willing.

“More or less,” Quentin says: exasperated, defensive, strained. “But seriously could you, like, just shut up? And do something, maybe?”

And that—yes. Yes, he can do something. He rolls, taking Quentin with him so that he can straddle the other man. Q’s mouth has bought him a little bit of sanity, at least, enough that he can quickly run through the familiar tuts to get Quentin ready for him. In his fantasies, he takes his time with this. In his fantasies, he slowly works Quentin open with his mouth and his fingers, pushing, pushing, pushing Quentin so close to getting off that he’s begging. The control he would need for that is just out of his grasp. He can almost feel it lurking past the wall of blind wanting that seems to be clouding all of his thoughts and actions.

“Listen,” he says, as he makes quick work of what’s left of their clothes. “You’re going to have to give me a do-over on this one. This cannot be the impression you take away of me in bed. We’ll make a day of it. There will be hours of foreplay. I’ll curate a series of wine pairings to accompany the things I’m going to do to you.”

“Sounds great,” Quentin answers. “Where are your condoms?”

Eliot manages to summon the box of condoms to himself and roll one on. His hands are shaking. He thinks he can feel the pollen working inside of him, dancing through his veins like a leaf on the wind. He should not be hard again, not this hard, not this soon. He should not be so desperate to get inside of Quentin that he thinks he might go all Carrie and set the house on fire if anyone tries to stop him. Getting off the other two times had been great, but standing poised on this particular threshold feels different, somehow. He can sense the pollen urging him onward, urging his hands onto Quentin’s skin. He gropes for the lube in his bedside table and clumsily dumps some into his palms. He thinks it should sizzle when it touches his overheated skin, but it doesn’t, just drips off the sides of his fingers and onto Quentin’s stomach. He gets himself slick and indulges himself long enough to press two fingers into Quentin. He watches Quentin’s back arch off the mattress with fascination. Eliot bends down to kiss Quentin’s neck and twist his fingers until he finds Quentin’s prostate—he crooks his fingers and rubs. He can feel Quentin’s need pouring off of him now. He can see it in Quentin’s flushed skin and soft face.

Something in him breaks and he gently slides his fingers out, wrapping a hand around Quentin’s thigh and pushing his leg up until the angle is better. He lines things up and starts to push in and then—blacks out, maybe. One second he’s pushing slowly into Quentin, the next he’s fully buried, braced over Quentin and watching down the length of his body as Quentin pushes up into the crude, stuttering rhythm Eliot has managed. Quentin hooks his leg over Eliot’s hip for better leverage and Eliot’s consciousness flickers out again.

He goes on like that for he’s not sure how long—moments of being acutely aware of Quentin alternating with moments of being aware of nothing other than the way being inside of Quentin feels. He comes to again and finds that they’re kissing, Quentin as sloppy now as Eliot has been since he first kissed him this afternoon. “Q,” he breathes, dragging his mouth away so that he can rub his cheek on Quentin’s jaw and lower, mouthing at Quentin’s salty, sweat-slick throat.

Quentin presses up into him again, lifting nearly all the way off the mattress to chase the contact they lost when Eliot moved. Eliot looks down and realizes Quentin is close—he’s so hard, flushed red and glossy with pre-come. “Fuck,” Eliot says. He manages a few more strokes, but, when he realizes Quentin’s dick is twitching every time Eliot fully buries himself inside of him, he arrives at the edge again with such speed that feels himself stop just shy of coming like it’s a screeching halt. Like he’s on the ledge of a tall building, arms windmilling for balance to keep himself from falling.

 _This_ , he thinks with sudden clarity. _This_ is what that sweet-smelling cloud of powder wanted from him. He suddenly isn’t sure he can last even another minute. He has his shit together enough to re-adjust, sinking back into his knees enough to pull Quentin halfway into his lap and get a better angle. He braces over him again, kissing Quentin hard as he pushes a hand down to wrap around Quentin’s dick. “It’s okay,” he mumbles against Quentin’s mouth. “Come for me.”

He times his strokes to the rhythm Quentin is lifting into him with—three, four, maybe five pumps of his hand until Quentin spasms on a loud, broken noise. Eliot feels wet heat on his knuckles the same moment he feels Quentin’s body clench around him and he manages only to sink back into him fully before he is also coming, rocking helplessly against Quentin’s hips like he can somehow crawl further inside him than he already is.

Something about this orgasm feels a little different—more like a release than the previous two. The effervescence in his skin seems to race wildly and joyfully in a wave that covers his whole body. Arms shaking, he half collapses onto Quentin, pushing his face against Quentin’s shoulder and panting against his damp skin. “That was—” he starts, but can’t get enough breath for more words. “I think—”

  
Quentin smooths his hand over Eliot’s incredibly fucked up hair. He, too, is still breathing too hard to speak. “I know,” Q finally manages. “I could kind of feel it.” He shifts a little under Eliot, a movement that reads as uncomfortable and, oh, right. Eliot gently—very gently—pulls out. He discards the condom and wrestles a blanket out from underneath them to cuddle beneath. He slowly becomes aware of the world outside of his bed. The air is cooling rapidly as the sun sets. The noise from downstairs is deeper and richer—more voices, more people home in the evening. He doesn’t have watch on but he thinks, from the way the light slants into his room, that he and Quentin have been in bed about an hour and a half, two hours max.

What is he going to say to Quentin? What _do_ you say to one of the best friends you’ve ever had after he lets you fuck him well enough to satisfy vindictive sex pollen? There has to be some middle ground between “this probably only worked because I kind of love you” and “hey, thanks for the lay, I owe you a coffee sometime.” He stares, a little, but hard enough that Q eventually blinks his eyes half open and peers up at Eliot through his eyelashes.

Eliot opens his mouth. He closes it. He opens it again. “Quentin, I—”

“You’re welcome,” Quentin says, grinning at him. “We can overthink it later.”

Eliot will definitely be overthinking it later. He might also be throwing Quentin an honest-to-goodness parade in his honor.

He’s saved from having to come up with any kind of eloquent or emotionally mature response by the firm knock of a small hand on his door. “Hey assholes,” Margo shouts pleasantly through the door. “Just so you know, your wards are down. We have a house full of psychics. Maybe one of you could get down here and entertain them?”

Quentin closes his eyes for a moment. Eliot watches the lines on his forehead furrow. “Great,“ Quentin says, finally, roughly half resigned and half amused “You can start repaying me right now. You go deal with those perverts. I’m going to take a shower. If Penny’s down there, text me when you get rid of him.”

“I’m on it,” Eliot says, accepting this quest with the solemnity it deserves. He kisses Quentin’s shoulder before rolling out of bed. Everything is a little sore, from his neck to his toes, his over-stimulated dick definitely the worst of it, though. Still, he feels…in control. He is in control. His hand twitches automatically towards the pink-speckled shirt he’d been wearing earlier before he remembers and diverts to his closet. By the time he turns around, Quentin has his jeans on and is tugging his shirt on over his head. “Hey, I—” He…what? Could not find a way he could possibly express his gratitude? Is pretty sure that he and Quentin would have the best sex of his life, even without sex pollen? Is not at all sure he wants this to be a one-off and a funny story they tell people a few years from now?

“Yeah,” Quentin says. “I know.”

There’s no way he could know. Eliot thinks maybe he does know, though.

“Shower,” Quentin says. He pads over on bare feet and kisses Eliot’s jaw. “Food. Alcohol. Go hold court. I’ll be down in like, 20.”

With that, Quentin heads for and slides out the door. He brushes past Margo, who looks between them with an expression of delicious fascination.

“Come, darling,” Eliot says grandly. He gestures broadly towards his closet. He is still naked. “Come help me select the appropriate attire for one’s first appearance after having absolutely kicked the ass of a revenge sex pollening.”


	2. It's Nice to Have a Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin and Eliot feel each other out in the wake of the sex pollen.

Eliot endures the focused attention of the psychics when he goes downstairs. 

That isn’t exactly true. 

Eliot _relishes_ the focused attention of the psychics. He hadn’t been thinking about wards—physical or mental—during the heights of his pollening. It certainly hadn’t occurred to him that he might be putting anything out there, let alone that he and Quentin together would leak enough sex into the air that it would seep into the minds of their resident psychics. 

There are about eight of them on the ground floor of the Cottage, though, so. Apparently, they’d been putting out more of a deluge than a trickle. The curious looks he gets from the non-psychics make him remember that they’d been rushed breaking down his room’s wards, too and _probably_ the sound buffering hadn’t survived it. 

Eliot relishes that too, though he spares a moment of silence for Quentin, who he imagines will be less smug than he is mortified by his new fame. 

“Anyway,” Eliot says, gesturing broadly towards the group of curious listeners gathered around him. “As Margo would say, Quentin banged the sex pollen right out of me. I’ve never felt better. I should send Guillermo flowers.”

“Ah,” one of the psychics says uncomfortably. “Do you mean Michael?” 

_Michael_. Of course. “Michael,” Eliot agrees. “Obviously.”

*** 

Quentin is downstairs not the promised 20 minutes later, but something closer to an hour and a half. The psychics have stayed and there’s a low key, impromptu thing happening. Eliot had nobly refrained from designing a signature cocktail to commemorate the day’s events, but it was a narrow victory. 

He sees Quentin slink down the stairs well into the swing of the thing. Stubbornness and indecision are warring on his face. Eliot nobly refrains again, this time from heralding Q’s arrival and drawing the entire room’s attention to him. He waits, instead, until Quentin visibly sets his shoulders and winds his way over to the bar. 

“What can I get you?” Eliot asks. He tries very hard to keep the level of flourish in his voice to the standard. 

“Yeah, uh, whatever,” Quentin says, because he is a barbarian. 

“ _Well_ ,” Eliot drawls. “I _did_ design a signature cocktail to commemorate the evening.” 

“You did not,” Quentin says. The stubbornness and indecision on his face are replaced with raw horror. 

“I did not,” Eliot confirms. “But if I had, you would have loved it. It would have been pink and fruity.” 

“Okay, then,” Quentin blinks, straightening, “go ahead.” 

“Go ahead?” Eliot asks.

“Go ahead. Make it for me.” The horror fades off Quentin’s face, taking the indecision with it. Eliot is left with Q’s open, stubbornly set expression. Quentin drags over a stool and folds his hands on the bar, the absolute picture of patience.

Q, it seems, is just full of surprises tonight.

“Okay,” Eliot says, slowly, drawing it out. “Coming right up.”

***

He goes through four variations before he finds one that feels just right. It is a pretty, pale lavender with a swirl of blackberry puree through it. 

“This one,” he says, holding it up to the light so that Quentin can admire its beauty. “I think this one may actually capture the _experience_ of our glorious lovemaking.” 

“I hate you so much,” Quentin sighs. His cheeks are flushed, probably because of the three boozy iterations he’d had to drink before Eliot fully achieved his vision. Eliot extends the glass to him, waiting with demonstrably bated breath as he takes it, turns it to find a good angle of approach, and takes a first, careful sip. He can tell by the way Q’s eyes lift to meet his own that he finally did nail it. 

He picks up the one he’d made for himself and toasts. 

***

Three days later, Eliot opens his door at 3 in the morning with every intention of a quick trip to the bathroom and then back to bed. Halfway back down the hallway, though, he’s awake enough to notice the slice of bright light coming from Quentin’s partially open door. He hesitates, waffling, then slides into the space as though he’d never had a second thought about it. Quentin is on his bed, one leg folded in front of him, the other knee bent up to his chest. He’s staring intently at a book in his lap. He looks up, surprised, when Eliot pours himself into the doorway. 

“Hey,” Quentin says. 

“Hey. Can’t sleep?” 

“The usual,” Quentin agrees. He closes his book and tosses it onto his nightstand, then stretches what must be a stiff neck and arms. “You?” 

“The usual,” Eliot says, even though it doesn’t make any kind of sense. He uses his hip to push himself off the door. “Fillory?” 

“Metallurgy,” Quentin says, making a face. “I figured if anything would put me to sleep, that would be it.” 

Eliot flops across Quentin’s bed, landing just beyond his knee. It’s the first time they’ve been on a bed together since The Pollen, and Eliot is relieved that it feels…normal. It’s normal. Quentin has been astoundingly not weird about the whole thing, slipping back into their usual habits and banter like nothing had ever happened. And it’s good. It’s a good thing. He didn’t want Quentin to be weird. But he’s also not sure he wanted _this_ either—back to the usual business of friendship like Eliot hasn’t already come inside Quentin twice. He stretches his arms over his head and leaves them there, looking up at Quentin, waiting to see if Quentin’s eyes slip downward.

They do. Just a flicker, but they definitely do. Eliot feels that quiet door they’ve always had between them ease open just a little. He slides his hand onto Quentin’s warm ankle, wrapping his fingers around the knob of bone. 

He says nothing. Quentin says nothing. They look at each other, saying nothing. The lights in the room get somehow dimmer, the air warmer. Eliot feels the door ease open a little more. 

“Well,” he says, then clears his throat because his voice cracks a little. “I do owe you one.”

“Owe me what?” Quentin asks. 

“A—” A good humping? A solid sexual turnabout? “A favor,” Eliot decides. “I could help you get to sleep.” 

Quentin watches him silently. Eliot lightly strokes his fingertips over the skin on Quentin’s ankle but inside, he feels his stomach start to clench, more butterflies turning into knots every second Quentin stays quiet.

Finally— _finally_ —Quentin seems to come to a decision. “Yeah, okay,” he says. 

They’re not the most seductive words Eliot has ever heard, but they release a tension in his shoulders he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His fingers flex on Quentin’s ankle and he smiles brightly up at him, using the sweep of his free hand to swing Quentin’s door shut and flip the lock. 

Getting from his back to his knees gracefully is a challenge, but he manages, rolling onto his side and pushing up with one hand. Quentin, for all of his earlier hesitancy, meets him halfway, bending down to kiss him as Eliot gets his weight onto both hands. Their lips slide together awkwardly for a moment before it clicks. Eliot gets a hand around the back of Quentin’s neck as they arrange arms and legs and then, fucking finally, he has Quentin beneath him. He takes a minute to savor the feel of it, Quentin’s lean, warm body filling in all of Eliot’s angles and hard edges. He works his thigh between Quentin’s legs, feeling the nubby flannel of Quentin’s pajama bottoms through the smooth silk of his own. 

They kiss until they’re both hard and the grind of hips is less idle. When he can bring himself to tear his mouth away from Quentin’s he drags his lips over to Quentin’s ear, his jaw, and down his neck, rubbing the soft skin around his mouth against the roughness of stubble. Quentin arches breathlessly beneath him as Eliot’s hands work his shirt up and tug at the ties on his bottoms. The knot slides open easily, the fabric well-worn and soft. Eliot kisses his collarbone, chastely, the way Quentin had kissed his own a few days ago, then slides down the bed, putting his mouth back on Quentin’s chest as soon as he clears his shirt. 

Quentin pushes up on his elbows as Eliot drags his mouth down further. Eliot can just see Quentin’s messy hair, his flushed face, his warn, dark eyes. Eliot wants him so badly that his fingers flex involuntarily in the fabric of Q’s shirt, in the thick cotton of his quilt. 

“Okay,” he says lightly, belying the need building in his gut. “Try not to wake the whole house.”

“I’ll do my—” Quentin starts, but breaks and falls back onto the bed as Eliot ducks his head and wraps his mouth expertly around the head of Q’s dick. “ _Fuck_ , El.”

He pulls off enough to whisper “Shhhhh,” then ducks again, pushing down further. 

He is good at this. He is _really_ fucking good at this, actually, but he hadn’t gotten the chance to do it last time. He starts slow, savoring the velvet feel of Quentin’s skin, the sharp taste of pre-come that starts almost immediately, the rough, helpless noises Q makes. He hums encouragingly when Quentin twists his fingers up in his hair, then again when it makes Q whimper. Eliot wants to wring him out, force away any thoughts other than the wet heat of his mouth, so he swallows Quentin down, burying him all the way down his throat, then backs off when Q’s fingers tighten and he starts to jerk his hips up like he can’t help it. 

“Jesus Christ, El,” Q manages. His breathing is ragged, his cheeks hot, his eyes wild. Eliot slows, letting him recover, then pushes it again. And again. He takes Quentin right to the edge and back again until he thinks even he can’t stand it anymore. Eliot pushes his hand down to wrap around his own dick, jerking off erratically as his tempo gets sloppier. All he can hear over his own rapid heartbeat are the soft, wet sounds of his mouth and Quentin’s ragged moaning. 

Quentin’s fingers tighten in his hair, like he’s determined not to let Eliot tease him this time. Eliot lets Q pull him down, swallowing to suppress his gag reflex as Q fucks up into his mouth. When Quentin comes, he arches off the bed, babbling something that Eliot only catches every third word of—all curses and his name. He pulls off as soon as Quentin’s fingers go slack in his hair, panting mouth pressed against Q’s though, and jerks himself until he comes, too, wet and hot and impossibly hard on his knuckles and all over Quentin’s quilt. 

He takes a minute to catch his breath then puts Quentin’s pajamas back together as he moves up the bed, collapsing by Q’s side with an arm thrown over his waist. They breathe. They do nothing but breathe. 

“Wow,” Quentin says, finally. Again, not the most eloquent praise he’s ever received, but he wholly appreciates the sentiment. He kisses Quentin’s shoulder, the side of his head. 

“Thank you,” he says solemnly. He pushes at the blankets so they can get under them, then manhandles Quentin—it doesn’t take much, really—into little-spooning. A couple of quick hand movements and the bedding is clean, the lights out. He plasters himself to Quentin’s back and slides his hand under Quentin’s shirt to rest on his stomach. He can feel Q’s breathing even out and finally slow, feels his always tense body soften into sleep. Maybe he should leave now, having completed his favor. Maybe. But Eliot isn’t going anywhere. 

***

“ Again?” Margo asks, her voice dripping with disbelief. “You hooked up _again_?”

“We did,” Eliot confirms coolly. He taps his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray a couple of times more than necessary, then takes another long drag. “I mean, it was my idea this time.” 

“That, I believe,” Margo says. “I just didn’t think Coldwater had it in him.” 

“Oh, he’s—” Eliot starts, then grimaces and starts over. “Are you doubting my world-renowned seductive appeal?” 

“Never,” Margo says breathily. She presses a sincere hand over her heart. “I’ll admit I did doubt our Q’s ability to do hook ups and not be squirrely about it in the morning, though.” 

And that’s the thing. Quentin, once again, had been completely normal afterwards. He’d woken up before Eliot for class, slid out of bed and dressed without waking him. Eliot had woken when the sunlight streaming through the window finally hit his eyes, a good twenty minutes after he usually gets up to primp before class. He’d thought, maybe, from that exit—but no, when they were all back for lunch, Quentin had acted like literally nothing unusual had happened to him the day before. Maybe even the whole week before. _Maybe_ even his entire life. 

That was not to say that Quentin was somehow magically smooth. He had the same intensity, the same false starts and sudden bursts of words. But he met Eliot’s eyes easily. He didn’t jump or flinch when Eliot, as usual, ran a casual hand over his hair on his way past the couch. 

“He’s—” Eliot stops, taps the cigarette again, tries to figure out what he wants to say. “He’s like a totally different person in bed. Well, not _totally_ different, but not like he’s too insecure to live, either.”

“Maybe it’s you,” Margo says skeptically. “Because that was not the impression I got with that whole Alice thing.”

“Maybe it is,” Eliot says, gesturing grandly. “Maybe it’s my magic dick.”

“Who has a magic dick?” Quentin asks, banging through the back door like its presence in his path personally offended him. 

“I do,” Eliot says. He rolls his head back so he can watch Q approach, upside down. “But the price of admission to this conversation is one bottle of wine.”

“You know it’s, like, 3 in the afternoon, right?” Quentin asks. 

“Oh, in that case. Two bottles,” Eliot counters serenely. He can see Margo watching them out of the corner of his eye. 

Quentin stills, waffling. “Fine,” he says eventually. “But you have to tell me which ones. I don’t want to hear about it if I don’t adequately predict your preferred vintage for day drinking.”

***

Their Friday night party is such a well-oiled machine that it runs itself. Eliot, having already made a tray of drinks and left the savages to serve themselves, considers himself free to go flop next to Quentin on the window seat. “Quentin,” he says warmly, “Q.” 

“Eliot,” Q replies, somewhere between wary and amused. “El.”

“Do you know what we should do?” Eliot gestures towards the room before them, the glowing letters gleaming, the table covered in abandoned cups and mostly empty platters. Quentin is the only one there, tucked into the window seat with his knees up. He’s somehow bendy like a yogi, but Eliot usually gets the sense that Q’s contortions are a way of making sure he’s ready to run at any minute, rather than some kind of articulation of profound relaxation. Eliot puts one hand on the closest knee, staring in fascination at the way his fingers splay over Quentin’s jeans. 

“Um?” Quentin says. Eliot realizes he hasn’t actually delivered his great idea yet. 

“Right,” he says, refocusing. “My great idea.” 

He uses the hand already on Quentin’s knee to push one leg aside, making space for him to lean between and kiss him. Quentin makes a surprised noise but doesn’t push him away. It is, Eliot’s tipsy brain thinks, kind of a victory. He uses Quentin’s brief distraction as he tries to relocate his drink without spilling it to push in closer and tangle a hand up in Quentin’s hair. Q opens for him, more out of instinct than anything else, Eliot assumes, but he takes the opportunity to lick into Quentin’s mouth. He tastes like alcohol and mint and something else that Eliot is learning is Quentin’s alone. 

Quentin is still kind of flailing—nowhere to put his drink, too split between not spilling and kissing Eliot back to do either particularly well. Eliot breathes a quiet laugh and pulls away, just a little. He takes the cup from Quentin’s unsteady hand and sets it on the nearest flat surface. Then, ambitious, he untucks Quentin’s knee and pulls it across his leg, giving him more space to lean back in. Miraculously, Quentin actually meets him, cupping his hands under Eliot’s jaw and kissing him sweetly, even as he allows Eliot to manhandle him into better position. One of his hands is still cold and wet from the cup, a sharp contrast to the smooth warmth of the other.

The music throbs from the next room. The cacophony of chatting voices and occasional burst of laughter is muffled just enough by the fifteen or twenty feet stretching between them and the rest of the party. He eases Q back onto the pillows and grins when Quentin drapes both arms around his neck. They kiss for… an hour? Six hours? Twenty minutes? There’s no way to know. He just knows that he’s not ready to be done when the dulcet shrill of Margo’s voice calling for him breaks through. 

“Shit,” he says, pulling himself back enough to squint at Quentin’s rubbed-red mouth and messy hair. He’s torn between the desire to drag Q back to the party with him, looking like this, or dragging him off somewhere more private. His baser instincts, as usual, win out. “Reading nook?” 

He’s too late. “ _There_ you are,” Margo says triumphantly. “Both of you. Come on, drinking games await.” She must sense the weaker link of the two, because she grabs Q’s hand and pulls him out from where he’s mostly beneath Eliot. “You’re a mess, Coldwater. Let’s go.” 

Q gives him a bemused glance over his shoulder but allows himself to be drawn back to the party. Eliot, resisting a few more seconds on principle, if nothing else, takes a moment to straighten his clothes and hair before he follows them, gliding smoothly into the room and settling in the only open spot left—next to a surly-looking Alice Quinn. Across from him, Quentin is self-consciously fixing his hair. Margo glows with the satisfaction of a woman who’s getting everything she wants out of life. Eliot sighs and focuses, trying to shake his thoughts away from all the filthy things he could be doing to Quentin in the reading nook. 

“Okay,” he says briskly, rubbing his hands together. “What are we playing?”

***

“So,” Margo says later. They’re tucked away in a nook of their own, watching the now-drunker partygoers fight their flagging energy with more volume and more activity. 

“Don’t start,” Eliot says, but he’s grinning around the rim of his glass. 

“You _like_ him.” 

Eliot considers spilling his drink on her as a distraction. He can’t bring himself to ruin a good dress, though, so he sighs and considers how to answer. 

“I do,” he says, finally, carefully. “But it’s not a thing. Well, it’s not a _big_ thing.”

Margo puts one of her small hands on Eliot’s knee and squeezes. She smiles sweetly. Eliot braces himself. 

“You know what I think?” she asks, her voice low and sugary. 

“Hmmm?”

“I think you’re completely cock-whipped.”

Which is. Well. Maybe.

***

Eliot is diligently moisturizing to the mellow soundtrack of some indie super group—and still trying to figure out how to channel Friday’s kissing into another hook up—when someone knocks on his bedroom door. He checks the clock to see that it’s just before midnight. That’s not unreasonably or rudely late, not at the cottage, so it could be almost anyone. When he opens the door, though, it’s not just anyone. It’s Quentin.

“Q,” Eliot says, the one syllable not enough to smooth over the surprise in his voice. 

“Um,” Quentin says. “Hi? I mean.” He looks hesitant but, with a sudden surge forward, presses their mouths together in a quick, dry, almost painfully chaste kiss. 

He’s gone too quickly for Eliot to kiss him back or get his arms around him, retreating to shift his weight nervously just past the threshold. Eliot blinks for the second it takes him to realize what’s happening—Quentin is actually there, late at night, in pajamas, kissing him first. He reaches out a hand to grab Quentin’s shirt and hauls him inside, pushing him back against the door as soon as it closes behind them. 

“Hi,” Eliot says. He braces a hand against the door and leans down enough to press their foreheads together. “Can’t sleep?”

“What? Oh, no. I just thought, maybe, if you wanted…”

“I want,” Eliot says firmly. Quentin dimples at him in relief and then, somehow, miraculously, tips his face up and kisses Eliot again, his mouth hot and soft. Quentin kissing him— _kissing him_ on purpose is something he needs to get used to. Or hopes to get used to, at least. He wraps his free hand around Quentin’s back and pushes off the door, spinning them fast so that Quentin laughs and has to grab his arms for balance. 

They topple backwards onto Eliot’s bed in a tangle of limbs. He gets a hand under Quentin and manhandles him up and onto the pillows. It’s an awkward shuffle until it’s suddenly not—his thigh between Quentin’s legs, their hips almost lined up, Quentin’s hair spread across the pillowcase, Quentin’s hand wrapped around the back of Eliot’s neck. He gets his hand under Quentin’s faded Columbia shirt and pushes, tearing away from Q’s mouth only as long as it takes to get their shirts over their heads. 

The world narrows to the points where they’re touching—the long presses of Quentin’s warm skin against his own. “I think about this all the time,” he mumbles against Quentin’s mouth. 

They’re so close he can feel the indecisive sound Quentin makes before he hears it. He grins and drags his mouth down to Quentin’s jaw, giving him space to say whatever it is Quentin’s about to over-talk about. He’s almost disappointed when Quentin huffs and says simply, “Me too.” 

“Oh, good,” Eliot says lightly. He shifts his weight to the side and kisses Q’s shoulder. “Turn over.” 

He’s gratified when Quentin doesn’t even hesitate—he just turns and rolls onto his stomach. Eliot drinks in the delicate skin at the nape of his neck where his hair has fallen forward around his face, the smooth, lightly muscled line of his back, his absolutely perfect ass. It’s almost entirely silent in the room, other than the quiet drag of skin against sheets and the pounding of Eliot’s heart in his ears. He shifts his weight back onto Quentin, dragging his mouth up from the ball of Quentin’s shoulder to the oddly elegant curve of his neck. “I’m going to eat your ass,” he says, millimeters from Quentin’s ear. “And then I’m going to fuck you until you can’t see straight.”

Quentin makes a gratifyingly broken noise, his hips jerking involuntarily. Eliot grins, gently biting the soft skin behind Quentin’s ear. He drifts down, dragging his mouth along the line of Quentin’s spine. He doesn’t have it in him to tease, not with Q already trembling beneath him. He slides his hands down Quentin’s ribs and pushes his pajama pants down, biting one smooth cheek as he works the flannel down around Quentin’s thighs and then off, tossed heedlessly into a corner. He spreads Quentin apart, licking a firm stripe from his balls to the tight ring of muscle. Quentin _moans_ and Eliot feels his dick twitch in response. 

“Oh my god,” Quentin chokes. “ _Fuck_.” 

That’s so good that Eliot does it again, slower, tip of his tongue curling at the end to catch a tight ridge of skin. Quentin jerks, moving away from Eliot’s mouth before catching himself and pushing back again. Eliot slides his hands forward enough to curve the tips of his fingers around Quentin’s hips and hold him in place. He takes a second to enjoy the feel of Q beneath his hands, how he’s gone from zero to a beautiful fucking mess in no time at all. He’s going to be so, so very easy. Eliot shifts to press a smiling kiss to the tense muscles of Quentin’s lower back. 

“Breathe,” Eliot reminds him, perhaps a touch smugger than he strictly intended. 

“I’m _trying_ ,” Quentin huffs. He does as he’s told, though, and takes in a deep, steadying breath that does nothing to calm the gentle quiver in his thighs. Good. Eliot has never wanted to take someone apart this much before. He sets to work in earnest, licking and kissing and teasing until Quentin’s got his knees under him and is rocking desperately back against Eliot’s face. It’s only Eliot’s hands on his ass that keep him still enough for Eliot to begin to coax him open. 

“Oh my _god_ ,” Q moans again before finally burying his face in the crook of his elbow to stifle the next gasp of sound. He doesn’t need to, which Eliot will try to remember to tell him just as soon as his tongue is free. The wards are functioning perfectly again, so the delicate sensibilities of the cottage’s prudes won’t be offended if - no, when - Eliot’s got Quentin desperate enough to wake the house. 

He replaces his tongue with a spit-slick finger, licking around the digit as it sinks further into Quentin. Q makes a low whining noise, stiffening for a second before he seems to make himself relax. He feels so ready, his body so yielding, but Eliot forces himself to slowly work in a second finger, licking around and between them to ease the stretch. By the time he gets to a third, Quentin’s shaking, muffling choked approximations of _El_ and _please_ into his arm. 

Eliot finally pulls his mouth away and sits up onto his knees, still twisting his fingers slowly inside of Quentin. “It’s okay,” he says soothingly, stroking Quentin’s back with his free hand. “I’ve got you.” 

He fumbles for the lube and the condoms in his bedside drawer and flicks the cap of the lube open with his thumb, liberally adding the cool liquid around the fingers he’s still fucking Quentin with. He gets the condom open and on and slick and then, very carefully, pulls his fingers out. 

“Are you ready?” he asks. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Quentin says breathlessly. “Like twenty minutes ago.”

Eliot grins, though Quentin can’t see him. He somehow even loves Q’s bratty sarcasm in bed. 

Q’s already up on his knees enough that Eliot can line them up and start pushing, slowly, working just the head of his dick past the still tight ring of muscle. He’s already so hard, so close to getting off on Quentin’s desperate attempts to fuck himself on Eliot’s fingers, that he has to pause and take his own advice—a slow, careful breath in and then out again. He wraps a hand around Quentin’s hip to hold him still and tries, consciously, not to grip him so hard that he leaves bruises. 

He rocks in again and again until he’s finally buried, his hips tight against Quentin’s ass. He knew—he always just _knew_ that Quentin would bottom like a fucking dream and his mind is clear enough now to register just how good he is, how much he wants it, how easily his body gives way to Eliot, wrapping his dick in tight wet heat. 

“I’ve got you,” he says again, stroking his free hand down Quentin’s sweat-slicked back. “It’s so good. You feel incredible.” 

Q makes a broken noise, louder than before, but he braces for leverage and rocks against Eliot, forcing him to move to chase Q’s hips when they pull away. He remembers his earlier promise—to fuck Quentin until he can’t see straight—and digs his fingers into Q’s hips harder, pulling him back so that Eliot can control the joining of their bodies. He sets a faster tempo, just shy of too hard, and loses himself in the feel of Quentin’s body giving way, the heat of him, the louder and louder noises he makes each time Eliot fills him. 

Eliot watches himself sink into Quentin’s ass, over and over again, watches Quentin’s body eagerly taking each thrust and clenching when he slides back out. He realizes he’s holding onto Q’s hip too hard, fingers digging in, and stops on the next thrust in, making tiny rocking movements to keep Quentin from protesting. 

“Come here,” he says roughly. He sinks back onto his heels and slides a hand up Quentin’s chest to pull him upright, carefully, until he’s in Eliot’s lap, his back flush against Eliot’s chest. The weight of him and the angle lets Eliot sink millimeters further into him, like he’s found two things that somehow, miraculously, fit perfectly together. He’s so close now, maybe as close as Quentin. He slides his hand down Quentin’s chest and wraps it around Quentin’s dick, stroking lightly once. Quentin gasps and tries to push into his hand again—Eliot lets him move and bites the curve of Quentin’s shoulder encouragingly when he figures out that he can control this—he can lift to push into Eliot’s hand and sink back down to fuck himself on Eliot’s dick. Quentin gets one hand up and behind him, tangling it in Eliot’s hair, tugging as he pleads with Eliot, like Eliot is still in charge of this. 

“Come on, baby,” Eliot says, whispering the words against Quentin’s ear. “I want to see you come.” He tightens the hand around Quentin’s dick and drags the other up to thumb at Quentin’s nipple. Quentin only lasts another few strokes. He comes, breathing Eliot’s name like a prayer, spurting hot and wet over Eliot’s knuckles, pushing into the tight clench of his hand even as it gets slicker and slicker. 

Eliot’s so close now himself that it’s just this side of painful. Quentin sags a little in his arms so Eliot pushes him back down, keeping one hand splayed between his shoulder blades to hold him still so Eliot can fuck him, hard, with little in the way of rhythm or angle. He comes, head down, buried inside of Quentin and trying to rock closer, further in. 

It’s only muscle memory that has him pulling out carefully a minute later and tying off the condom before collapsing next to Quentin on the bed, his whole body loose, his breathing ragged. 

When Quentin recovers—Eliot’s head is still spinning—he shifts onto his side and drapes an arm over Eliot’s ribs. 

“Eliot?” he says. 

“Hmmm?”

“I’m cold.” 

Between them, they manage to get under Eliot’s rumpled blankets, tangling limbs and breath until they both fall asleep.

***

The morning is not awkward, precisely, but it is uncertain. Quentin wakes when Eliot’s alarm goes off. He kisses Eliot’s shoulder and slides out of bed, pulling on clothes and heading out the door with a vague “my phone—my alarm” thrown over his shoulder. Eliot glimpses a smudge of a bruise on Quentin’s left hip before the gray cotton covers it. He can just hear the blare of the alarm from down the hall once his door opens and makes a mental note to soundproof Q’s room if they do this again. He really fucking hopes they’re going to do this again. 

He doesn’t see Q again until after he’s hit the bathroom, put his silk pajamas back on, and gone downstairs to make coffee. Quentin hurries down the stairs, showered and dressed, his damp hair curling around the neck of his sweater. Eliot has a flash of memory—Quentin, shamelessly pushing back against his fingers. 

“Coffee?” he says lightly. He can do cool and normal. If _Quentin_ can do cool and normal, then Eliot definitely can. 

“No time,” Quentin says. He grabs a two-day-old muffin from the selection and steps closer, ducking under Eliot’s arm when he reaches to grab a coffee mug. “I’ll see you later, though?”

Eliot blinks down, still trying to process the guy under his arm, the hand on his hip, when Quentin presses up and kisses him—briefly and sweetly, barely more than a brush of lips, but still definitely a kiss. In the morning. With other people around. 

“Uh, yeah,” Eliot says, neither coolly nor normally. “Later.”

Quentin grins at him and ducks back under his arm, shifting the strap of his bag higher as he heads out the door. Eliot blinks after him. The bright block of light remains imprinted on his vision for long seconds after the door swings shut. He’s still trying to process when he hears Margo’s heels clicking down the stairs. She’s saying something, but Eliot can’t hear it yet—he’s stuck in that brilliant light and the lingering feel of Quentin’s mouth. 

“What?” he asks when he senses her silence, blinking at her to clear his vision.

“What happened to you?” she asks. 

“Oh,” he says. “Q kissed me.”

“Old news,” she says, waving it away. “Tell me when you have something new to report.” 

And…he might. He just might. He shakes off his uncertainty and dons his usual poise. Beaming, he holds a clean mug aloft. “Coffee?”

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fic in literally a decade. This fandom is eating my whole brain.
> 
> Special thanks to YeOldeTabby for help with all that rimming.
> 
> Titles courtesy of one Taylor Swift.


End file.
